The Williams report was commissioned after a catastrophically botched timetable change last summer led to nearly half the trains in northern England being delayed or cancelled. The incident exemplified how the railways, which made much progress after being privatised in the early 1990s, have gone off-track. Last year delays and cancellations reached their worst level in nearly a decade. At the same time passenger numbers fell by 1.4%, the first dip since privatisation. Amid all this, passengers are paying more. Ticket prices have risen twice as fast as wages since 2010.
威廉姆斯的這份報(bào)告是在去年夏天的一次災(zāi)難性的列車時(shí)刻表變動(dòng)后發(fā)布的，那次變動(dòng)導(dǎo)致英格蘭北部近一半的列車延誤或取消。這一事件說明，在上世紀(jì)90年代初私有化后取得巨大進(jìn)展的鐵路，是如何偏離軌道的。去年，列車延誤和取消達(dá)到近十年來的最嚴(yán)重水平。與此同時(shí)，乘客人數(shù)下降了1.4%，這是自私有化以來的首次下降。在這一系列變化中，乘客們花費(fèi)越來越高。自2010年以來，票價(jià)上漲速度是工資上漲速度的兩倍。
When Britain broke up and sold British Rail, the state-run monopoly, it hoped to spur competition and cut costs. With this aim it embarked on a radical experiment, tried before only in Sweden, of separating the management of the tracks from that of the trains. Politicians feared that chaos could ensue, and some politically sensitive lines could close, if the system went from rigid state monopoly to free-market free for-all overnight. So they introduced a system of franchises, in which companies could bid for the right to operate specified services, to ensure continuity and allow for the subsidising of loss-making services.
當(dāng)英國拆分并出售國有壟斷企業(yè)英國鐵路公司時(shí)，旨在刺激競(jìng)爭(zhēng)并降低成本。為了實(shí)現(xiàn)這一目標(biāo)，英國開始了一項(xiàng)激進(jìn)的實(shí)驗(yàn)，將鐵軌的管理與火車的管理分離開來，這項(xiàng)實(shí)驗(yàn)之前只在瑞典進(jìn)行過。政客們擔(dān)心，如果金融體系一夜之間從僵化的國家壟斷變成全民自由市場(chǎng)，那么混亂可能隨之而來，一些政治敏感路線也可能會(huì)隨之關(guān)閉。因此，政客們引入了特許經(jīng)營(yíng)體系，在這個(gè)體系中，企業(yè)可以競(jìng)標(biāo)特定服務(wù)的運(yùn)營(yíng)權(quán)，以確保連續(xù)性，并允許對(duì)虧損服務(wù)進(jìn)行補(bǔ)貼。
The opposition Labour Party, which came to back privatisation in the 1990s, wants to renationalise the network. Andy McDonald, the shadow transport secretary, argues that privatisation has left “a fragmented and inefficient network that drives up costs”, and says the answer is for a single state-owned firm to run both trains and track. Most voters seem to agree. A poll last year by BMG Research found that 64% support nationalisation. (The same is not necessarily true of rail-users, notes Anthony Smith of Transport Focus, a watchdog. It finds that passengers care more about having a reliable service than who runs it.)
上世紀(jì)90年代開始支持私有化的反對(duì)黨工黨希望將鐵路網(wǎng)重新國有化。影子內(nèi)閣交通部長(zhǎng)安迪•麥克唐納認(rèn)為，私有化留下了“一個(gè)支離破碎且效率低下的鐵路網(wǎng)，讓成本更高”。他表示，解決辦法是讓一家國有企業(yè)同時(shí)運(yùn)營(yíng)火車和軌道。大多數(shù)選民似乎同意這一觀點(diǎn)。BMG研究公司去年的一項(xiàng)調(diào)查發(fā)現(xiàn)，64%的人支持國有化。(監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)“交通焦點(diǎn)”的安東尼•史密斯指出，鐵路用戶的情況未必如此。調(diào)查發(fā)現(xiàn)，乘客更關(guān)心的是提供可靠的服務(wù)，而不是由誰來運(yùn)營(yíng)。
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